The Jamestown/Xiaogang Survival Game: A Class Experiment

ABSTRACT One of the most important insights for any economics class is the power of private incentives and competition to work hard when the fruits of one's effort are not diluted by incomplete property rights. The paper reports results of a classroom experiment that implements a transition from a “common field” with shared harvests to a division into private parcels. The class exercise can be implemented with playing cards or online, and an associated lab report/worksheet that demonstrates dramatic productivity gains as property rights are implemented. Outcomes are discussed in comparison with the experience in the Jamestown colony, and with similar events 350 years later during the process of Chinese agricultural decentralization. In each of these historical case studies, the tension between private and public production activities was magnified by the specter of starvation.